Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for testing a control unit, in which sensor data are transmitted over a network connection to a real or simulated control unit, which data are calculated via a data processing system using simulation. In addition, the invention also relates to a sensor data simulator for simulating data of a sensor to test control units that process the simulated data, comprising a data processing system having at least one graphics processor unit.
Description of the Background Art
Methods and devices of this type are known in the prior art, especially in the field of automotive component supply. Such methods are known as HIL—hardware in the loop, or SIL—software in the loop. In these methods, either actual, technical control units or simulated control units are tested in that simulated sensor data are passed to them over a network connection as though the control units were installed in an actual motor vehicle and acquire environmental data detected by sensors or other measurement data, in particular in real time. Control units can thus be functionally tested in this way with no need to perform actual test drives, which is advantageous especially in the preproduction stage. A simulated control unit can be, for example, a computer that in technical terms behaves like an actual control unit because of software running on it.
It is also known in other fields to have computationally intensive system-internal tasks performed not only by the main processor of a data processing system, but also to use the computing capacity of a graphics processor of a graphics processor unit of the data processing system for these tasks, since these processors are very powerful and in some cases are also present in a parallel architecture, and are not fully utilized by their visualization tasks, and thus represent a hardware resource that can be used in an ancillary or even primary manner for computing tasks.
After calculation in this context, the data calculated by graphics processors are transmitted from the memory of a graphics processor unit into the main memory of the data processing system, which is the only place they are further processed.
In the field of control unit testing using simulated environmental and/or sensor data, in contrast, the graphics processors of the data processing systems have not hitherto been used for simulation purposes, since there were no adequately fast transmission paths available to provide the calculated data from a graphics processor unit to the control units under test. Transmission of the calculated data from the graphics processor unit first into the main memory of the data processing system for the purpose of forwarding through network connections has hitherto cancelled out any speed advantage in the calculation.